


means the world to me

by troiing



Category: Holby City
Genre: 19.07 The Kill List, Episode Tag, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 14:39:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9329438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troiing/pseuds/troiing
Summary: Bernie keeps a wine cork in her pocket in Ukraine.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PotofCoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PotofCoffee/gifts).



> A prompt from magnass on tumblr (potofcoffee here): Berena + Lily Sevin's cover of "Jenny" by Studio Killers. Title from the same song.
> 
> The fic was meant to just be a quick one to get the ol' creative juices flowing, so it's... almost a series of tiny vignettes about Bernie coming home. Roughly edited to make presentable on AO3, but definitely not polished. Apologies.

She keeps wine corks in a cheap plastic vase at home, and one in her pocket in Ukraine. Months later, it still carries the spicy aroma of the wine they’d drunk in the office, toasting sexual tension, promising to keep their partnership to the operating room.

She wishes she’d never made that suggestion, but she’s terrified of saying so.

It’s all she can think of when she tries to reply to Serena’s email, her texts. So she doesn’t reply at all.

* * *

When she returns to Holby, Bernie has every intention of telling Serena everything.

Or rather, she has every intention of telling Serena everything, if the opening is there. She's not planning to jump in head-first, after all, if Serena doesn't seem prepared to accept her back.

In her mind, in an ideal world, Serena greets her with a brilliant smile, maybe a hug. They drink the bottle of Shiraz - a last-minute, impromptu gift, wrapped hastily in the back of a damned taxi - in the afternoon, and in the plush haze of red wine find that both of them still want more than friendship. That enough time has passed among those thoughts that it’s safe to move forward. To tether their lips together with a thousand kisses, to touch -

But Bernie is a grown woman, and she knows things are not that simple. She is prepared to welcome the prospect of friendship, of partnership, with open arms and an aching heart.

She is not prepared for Serena to have forgotten all of it.

A friend would have remembered she was coming back.

* * *

“Damn. D’you have - ” Realizing the futility of the question, Bernie shakes her head. “Nevermind.”

“What?” Serena turns from her locker, arching a brow at a frustrated Bernie.

“Nothing," she says, but opens her palm anyway to reveal the broken ponytail holder. "The elastic snapped; I haven’t got another.” She frowns at her locker as if it’s the barren metal compartment’s fault for not being fully stocked on her first day back.

“Oh. Right.” Serena watches her for a moment, then produces a hair elastic from her own locker. “Here.” Bernie jerks her head to the side, glances between Serena’s hand and her face - or rather, her hair.

“Why do you - ”

“I was just… holding on to it,” Serena replies before Bernie can fully voice the question. Shrugs. Clears her throat. “It’s, um. It’s yours anyway. So. There you are. No excuses for not joining me in theatre, right?”

One or two short blonde strands still cling, tangled, to the elastic. Bernie gazes at it for a moment, then clears her own throat. “Yes. Right.”

* * *

Bernie keeps a cheap plastic vase of wine corks as the centerpiece of a messy countertop, and it’s almost the first thing Serena finds when they arrive at her flat. The vase is new to her, because Bernie did not start the collection until after the one night Serena had come for supper at her place.

She plucks a cork out of the top of it. It’s stained red, scented with a fresh tang of anise. “Shiraz?” she asks, turning to face Bernie and finding her very, very close. For a brief moment, Serena's eyes widen; she doesn't gasp, but she looks like she might. It fades so quickly, Bernie wonders if she imagined it.

Bernie tucks her hand into her pocket, brings it out with an identical cork cupped in her palm. “Shiraz.”

Serena’s eyes flit from Bernie’s hand to her face, and Bernie remembers the elastic.

In her kitchen, hours after the earlier incident and just a short time after the kiss that had left her breathless, flushed, burning, Serena takes the cork from her hand and deposits the both of them carelessly on the counter behind her. With her other hand, she takes Bernie’s wrist. Makes a plateau of Bernie’s palm with their fingers tangled and lets her lips linger on calloused flesh.

“Serena, I don’t - if this goes sideways…”

“I don’t care if it goes sideways.” Forceful, breath hot on Bernie’s palm. “Sideways, pear-shaped, upside-down. I’ll take my chances.”

Bernie’s hips are already pressed firmly against Serena’s by the time she’s finished, and she can’t help but feel the same.

They’ll take their chances, and hope for the best.

* * *

“Not hope for the best,” Serena mumbles later with her face pressed into the crook of Bernie’s neck, fingers curled into the tips of Bernie’s hair. “Work for it. You’ve already made me work for you, and I don’t plan to stop now.”

“You’re right. I - I like that,” Bernie stammers, breathless in the presence of this woman, this creature, this… friend. She drags Serena’s hand to her mouth, kisses her palm, her knuckles, her fingertips.

She’s a woman of action, after all.


End file.
